


Love in an Identity Crisis

by emmaliza



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Angst, Crack Treated Seriously, Enemy Shipping, Guilt, Identity Issues, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Multi, Obsession, Series A, Series B, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23139043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaliza/pseuds/emmaliza
Summary: To love someone, first you have to know them.There's only one person who really knows Blake.
Relationships: Roj Blake/Practically Everyone, Roj Blake/Travis
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	Love in an Identity Crisis

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kinkmeme prompt: "Blake keeps sparing Travis's life because he is secretly in love with him. Yes."
> 
> One day, I will learn how to write cracky prompts crackily. One day.

The first memory he gets back is Travis.

It comes to him in the padded cell of a Federation psych unit, as he writhes upon a hard mattress through another disturbed night. He still dreams of the massacre, of those people slaughtered while he hid (his friends, his followers they said they were). And he dreams of a man. Clad in black leather, standing triumphant over the ruined bodies of innocents. He dreams of the look in the man's eye, vicious with bloodlust, before he shoots it out, and a hand too for good measure.

Of course it doesn't make any sense to him at the time. _A nightmare_ , he thinks, running his fingers through his hair and trying to ignore the cameras watching him struggle. He doesn't know who that man is, nor does he care.

It's not until weeks later, on board the London, that the reality of his dream returns to him, and he has a name to call the rabid dog. Travis. Of course it would be Travis.

* * *

Blake must have had lovers. Male lovers, he presumes, he doesn't think the Federation have altered his attractions so much. They could have, it's certainly possible - before his trial he was rather ashamed and in denial of his homosexual tendencies, and perhaps the Federation implanted those on purpose, to keep him cowed and frightened. But it seems unlikely, given they don't seem to have given him any inclinations toward the sort of deviancy they've actually accused him of (thank god).

No, he suspects he was with a man long ago. Many men, even. He just doesn't remember any of them. No doubt they were all rebels, because where else would you find men who would indulge such passions openly? That must be why they are missing from Blake's mind. Bran Foster, he spoke as if they were close. Were they lovers? Blake would have thought he was too old, but perhaps that was the way his preferences skewed.

Jenna thinks she is in love with him, but she doesn't know him. He tries not to let on how little there is to know. If he does feel a flicker of attraction to her, what is that? Federation brainwashing to make him 'normal'? A natural urge overcoming the cruel punishment they've devised him? Simple, boring, harmless bisexuality?

He doesn't know, that's the thing, and so whether or not he would want to, it would be wrong to answer her feelings, or even acknowledge them, when whatever he feels might just be a cruel trick.

* * *

When they meet Cally, Blake confides in her. He tries to make it sound as if he is more concerned on a political level by the yawning absences in his mind, not a personal one, but he doesn't think she's fooled a second. As he explains he hopes against hope that with her telepathy, and despite the fact she's only just met him, she can fill in that void.

Cally is sympathetic to his plight, but there's nothing she can do for him. "Your memory must return in its own time. It may never come back in its entirety." Blake blanches. That really wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Trying to force the matter will only create new false memories in place of the ones they gave you." And Blake can think of nothing he wants less than that.

She sighs and squeezes his hand. "Focus on what seems real," she says, clearly not willing to leave him with nothing. "Hopefully, it will all come back from there."

Travis. He seems real. Blake still wakes from dreams where the man stands proud over the bodies of his comrades, or where he looms over Blake's prone body as he's strapped to a Federation interrogation device. He knows that doesn't make sense, but - Travis is unquestionably real, Blake has absolute faith in that. In him. It's not fair that he should have forgotten the friends and allies who gave their lives for his cause, and have the face of the man who killed them permanently etched in his brain, but it is true.

_He's dead in any case. I killed him._ That also feels real, and Blake tries to relish the moment, how it felt to to shoot Travis in the head. Maybe he can fill those empty spaces up with vengeance.

But it doesn't work. How do you avenge people you can't remember?

When he learns Travis is still alive, despite the rage and the confusion, he can't shake an odd sense of relief. That there is someone alive, somewhere, who knows who he is.

* * *

Travis knew he was coming. He's sure, if he said that to his crew, they wouldn't see the significance of it – _you wanted to throw our lives after Cally's the second you realised she was missing,_ he can imagine Avon telling him. _Who wouldn't know you were coming?_

Well, he wouldn't, for one. He knew what he wanted to do, of course, but he did not know if that was him, or some lingering conditioning to make him easy to lure into a trap. Maybe that's the only reason he let the others talk him out of it. But Travis, Travis knew, and so that means the real Roj Blake is the one who came back for her, who would give anything for his friends.

As he retires to his quarters for the evening, he runs his fingers along Travis' gun. He's not sure why he bothered to take it off Cally. He's not sure why she bothered to take it in the first place, unless she knows something he doesn't. It's just a standard issue Federation mini-gun; nothing to be learnt from it, as Avon rather bluntly informed him. It's small. Rather pathetic seeming. Still, Blake knows better than to underestimate it.

_You don't matter enough to kill,_ he told Travis, and he knows it's true – Travis is just a Federation soldier with an obsessive vendetta, nothing more, nothing less. All there is between him and Blake is memories.

But Blake has so few of those.

He sighs, squeezing the gun in his hand. _Focus on what seems real,_ Cally told him. He wonders if he should take all this as evidence he's in love with her. After all, he did almost throw his life away to save her. That sounds like the sort of thing a man in love would do.

But no, that doesn't feel real, not like Travis' cold, hard metal to his skin does.

* * *

He's not sure when the dreams changed. Well, in many ways, they haven't – the scenarios are just the same: himself as Travis' prisoner, tortured into renouncing all he stands for. Himself at the butt of Travis' gun, forced to beg for his friends' lives. Himself mindless and brainwashed, reduced to grovelling at the man's boots.

The dreams themselves haven't changed, but the way he wakes from them has. Where as once he would have woken in a panic, thrashing and screaming, wondering where and who he is, now he wakes up hot, hard and wanting.

Blake curses and shakes the dreams from his head as he throws himself into the shower, shivering as the water runs ice cold to cleanse any hint of desire from his body. Of course he doesn't want Travis. How could he? The man murdered twenty of friends.

(Friends he still can't remember.)

He doesn't want to examine what this could mean, and so he reasons that he can hardly be afraid of the man anymore, now he's stood before him and stood him down, and so his brain must handle the trickle of memories that keep returning, getting warped and corrupted no matter how hard he tries to keep them straight, somehow.

It's unpleasant, but Blake refuses to let himself be burdened by them. Like Jenna told him, he can't survive with guilt weighing him down. They're just dreams, after all. They don't matter.

* * *

Blake could have killed him. He came so close. He had the chance. Almost anyone would have. And he didn't.

He is less eloquent in explaining his reasons to the others than he was to Giroc and Sinnofar. But Avon seems to see straight through him regardless. “Yes, very noble of you Blake, to let a dangerous enemy go because you do not like what it would say about _you_ if you killed him. A fine piece of ideological masturbation there,” he drawls, sarcasm as blistering as ever. “I'm sure the next group of innocent civilians he massacres will be most grateful for your stab of conscience.”

That makes Blake snap. “I hardly need a lecture from you on concern for the masses.” Then he walks out. Deep down though, he knows Avon is right. His decision was selfish, and he has left Travis to free harm any number of victims. He hopes the man is too fixated on him to concern himself with any other mission, but he knows Travis will not hesitate to slaughter anyone who gets in his way.

So why did he do it? He had half a dozen reasons. _Too weak?_ Yes, that makes sense; he may be a terrorist, but he's never liked to think of himself as a killer. _I know I can beat him._ True enough. At least, he always has so far.

_I would enjoy it._ Oh yes, he would enjoy that, to take Travis' life with his own hands, watch him impaled on his spear. It is too much like the dreams he has, the ones in which he fights back, gets the upper hand, has Travis at his mercy... Dreams he still tries to pretend don't exist during waking hours.

They are all good reasons, but there's one other. If he killed Travis, Travis would be dead, and with him any memory of who Blake was before. Selfish as it is, Blake can't do that. He can't kill Travis if it means killing himself with him.

He thinks of the woman Travis had with him. The mutoid. Of all the barbarities of the Federation, few of them ever disgusted him like mutoid modification. _The procedure wipes all trace of memory, and with it all identity._ That poor woman was dead long ago.

* * *

Travis is different after they escape with Orac. He looks different. Sounds different. Feels different. Blake heard he was sent for some sort of re-education, and doesn't like how uneasy that thought makes him.

It is him though. It must be. Who else loathes Blake that much?

He learns about the clone later. That makes him uneasy too. The man is free, now, but the thought of a version of himself that Travis had complete power over... Travis would want to punish this copy, to inflict every pain and humiliation he cannot on the real Blake on him. He would want to kill him, but the clone they spoke to was very much alive. So what then?

Blake wakes in the middle of the night from another desperate dream and thinks __so what indeed?__

* * *

Travis is on trial and so is he. That's what they do with murderers. Gan, Gan, his face haunts Blake's dreams, those cold white eyes as the life left him, and Blake wanted to remember his dead friends, didn't he?

There's no shirking this responsibility, he knows this is all his fault. His foolish plan. His lies and manipulations. His falling into a trap, into Travis' trap, like he did five years ago.

(He wonders, if he had simply killed Travis when he had the chance, would things have been different? Perhaps not. He doesn't know if that makes it better or worse.)

He wants to be done with it. He tries. He tries to bury himself alive on some small planet and let whatever cruelty of nature is waiting take him, but of course it's not that simple. He doesn't know how to give in, even when he desperately wants to. And he doesn't really expect his crew to just leave him there – not even vicious Avon, whose tongue is only more vicious in grief; he has risked his life for Blake's own too many times for Blake not to realise he'd do anything to save him.

Then there is Zil, who does everything she can to protect him. She knows nothing about the Federation, the war, Travis, she has no reason think him a hero or a villain. And she doesn't. She thinks him a child. An innocent. Blake has never felt less innocent.

She gets killed for her efforts, and Blake remembers: he has to be worthy of it. Her, Gan, those twenty friends – he must make it so their sacrifices aren't all in vain.

He laughs when he has the idea of attacking Travis' trial. Of course. Who else would it be to bring him back to himself? Who else could it possibly be?

It's not until later that he realises their attack, far from dooming Travis, gave him the opportunity to escape certain death. He tells himself he isn't relieved.

* * *

They receive a message and it's Travis, who says he's on the run from the Federation, that he wants to ally with Blake, that they can help one another. Blake doesn't believe it for a second, of course. But despite himself, he wants to.

He feels sick for even thinking such a thing. The man murdered twenty of his friends (twenty one, if you include Gan), how can Blake want to spare him for – what, old time's sakes?

But he does. He wants to keep Travis as his ally, as his own. He wants to believe such a man could be a force for good. He wants to believe he can keep clinging to this one remnant of who he used to be, without the guilt of letting a monster roam the galaxy. That Travis really can help him, that he can make Blake whole again, not this cut-up hybrid of half-formed memories and lingering anger.

(Travis can't even do that for himself.)

Of course, it's hard to believe in Travis' change of heart when he's holding Blake's cousin prisoner and threatening to kill her. Inga. He was in love with her, wasn't he? Or was he just fond and proud of her as a cousin ought to be? Was she even old enough for him to fall in love with the last time he saw her? God, why do things never make sense?

So of course he goes down, because who would Roj Blake be if he wasn't the sort of man to go rescue a damsel in distress. And of course it's all a trap, and of course his uncle betrayed him to protect his daughter, and of course Avon sold them out in some foolish attempt to protect Blake from himself, and it's all so stupidly obvious that Blake wants to laugh.

Travis has him blindfolded and bound, and it's disturbingly like one of his dreams, being at Travis' mercy as he threatens him for what he wants. Still they play this game, this idea that they could work together, and Blake finds himself telling him how he believes he was right, even with a knife at his cousin's throat. He feels like a fool. He feels like a man in love.

Inga. He should love her, shouldn't he? She was long before he got involved in the rebellion, the Federation shouldn't have touched those memories, she should feel as real as Travis does. But she doesn't. Blake wonders what it is they did to him to ruin that too.

(He still wonders about the rest of his family. Did they know he was in the resistance? Where they in it with him? Or did they curse his name as they were being murdered? Did they even know why they were being murdered?)

But he does admire her, causing enough distraction to let them go free, for her father to capture Travis and – Blake still can't do it, can he? Even with his family threatened, with Avon wounded, with another link to his past standing right there, he can't bring himself to kill Travis.

He shouldn't be surprised.

So he decides to leave him for Servalan. He doubts that will work; Travis seems almost as unkillable as he does, but frankly he just doesn't want to think about it anymore.

When he leaves he promises Inga he'll come back for her, but in truth he doubts he will. He suspects that, if she got to spend more time with him, she would not appreciate what he's brought back.

* * *

It was so easy, that is what he loathes the most. That he so quickly and so quietly slipped back into the role of Federation puppet. Of Travis' puppet. He didn't even know what he was doing, he can't even remember. A box, that's what Avon said, that's all it took to turn him back into their pawn. Perhaps he's never been anything but.

The thought leaves him feeling sick and helpless for days. He thought he had healed – if not to what he was, into something new, some person who could fight the Federation the way Roj Blake once did, even if he wasn't so sure he was the same man anymore. But now? How can he believe that if it was so easy for them to put him under their spell? To use him against his friends, his crew, the same way they once used him against the rebellion he led?

And Travis. Blake didn't even recognise him, and that sickens him too. _The man who killed twenty of my friends? Yes, I'd remember him._ But he didn't, did he? And if he can't remember Travis properly, who is he, really?

The week is another gaping absence, but it hurts more this time because he was so sure there would be no more of those. And so his brain is ever more eager to fill it all in.

Yes, he can imagine what Travis would want with a Blake completely under his control, one who didn't even recognise him and couldn't think to resist even if he did. Unfortunately, he can imagine all too well.

Blake realises he has no reason to feel betrayed. Travis loathes him, and would stop at nothing to kill him, that is no secret. And yet, somehow he always thought that Travis must... respect him more than that. That he would want to kill Blake as he was, on his feet, fighting all the way. Not some brainwashed lackey who couldn't stop him. Perhaps that was naïve, but still, there must be some reason he didn't come after Blake during his years as a model Federation citizen, mustn't there?

There's one more thing that makes Blake feel sick inside. And that's the thought this must be his fault. That somehow, with his sordid dreams and his ongoing refusal to kill Travis and be done with it, he asked for this. That Travis must have known there was a part of Blake who longed to be at his mercy, the last place he remembered knowing who he was, and gave him exactly what he wanted.

And part of Blake still wants it. After all, he knows who he is less than ever now.

* * *

No-one could be surprised that he let Travis go in Freedom City. What did he say this time? It would be a kindness to kill him. Better he have to suffer the consequences of his failure. He's said that before, that he was simply leaving Travis for someone else to deal with – somehow he never ends up dealt with. What he said was true enough, but it's skirting the issue. He wants Travis to suffer, yes, but he does not want him dead. He can't. He can't let Travis die.

Avon, who he did not even know was there, knows about his entirely predictable decision and comes to admonish him for it. “Of course you let him go,” he says, and Blake sees no sense in denying it. “Nevermind that he will now pursue us all the way to Star One, as if your quest wasn't suicidal enough. But you let him go, because you always let him go. If I didn't know better, I would accuse you of having some sordid affection for the man.”

Blake doesn't bother to answer that. _Sordid affection._ A curious euphemism. Avon must, in his own way, be trying to be tactful. _I'm not in love with Travis._ No, how could he be? Travis isn't the kind of man who can be loved. _I'm not in love with him, except for how I dream of him constantly and think he's the only person who really knows me and feel like if he died I'd die too..._

But that's not love, it's just tragic echoes of pain and trauma. Nothing more.

It would make sense to say Travis is in love with him, though. After all, Travis is a Federation attack dog, more weapon than man at this point. Ruthless, cruel, single-minded obsession must be the closest thing to love he is capable of. And he's obsessed with Blake, isn't he?

But Blake is different. He is the hero of the revolution, he is the one people to look to to free them from the oppression the Federation has inflicted upon them. He should be capable of more than that, shouldn't he?

But as he has slowly learnt, 'should be' is not the same as 'is'.

* * *

The dreams change again, this time for the worst. Before he's always had some sense of plausible deniability, the fact he was dreaming of something both awful and quite possible, even if he woke up throbbing between his legs at the thought of it.

But now, they are simply in bed together, naked and raw and vulnerable. They look like lovers.

The location is not terribly romantic, small and cramped and grey. A military barracks, he presumes. Yes, he'd imagine Travis to live somewhere like this.

It's not as if they are different people. He is still the rebel leader determined to bring freedom to the galaxy, and Travis is still the Federation officer (even if he's a fugitive, Travis will be Federation until the day he dies) determined to bring him to justice. But it just doesn't seem to matter, the way things don't in dreams.

Travis' gun hand runs up his thigh and makes him shiver. “Are we lovers now?” he asks, short of breath.

He's furnished with a cruel smile. “Why shouldn't we be lovers?” This Travis looks like he does now, but speaks like he used to. “We make a well-matched pair. We are both military-minded–” he ducks to pepper kisses along Blake's bared neck, “–ruthless, and devoted to our duty.”

Blake groans. _Star One_. He is doing the right thing, he must be doing the right thing. Why else would he have come all this way? And yet it makes him uneasy, to hear Travis describe them as one and the same.

“I'm not like you,” he says, shuddering, and Travis smiles against his neck. Of course, why would he say that if it wasn't true? True enough to be denied, anyway. “I let you go.”

“Oh no.” Travis kisses his lips, gently. “You could never let me go.”

Blake kisses him back, and it seems easy. He feels right here. Not safe, he could never feel safe with Travis, but–

Real. It feels real.

They pull apart, and Blake eyes Travis' body up and down, that body that seems to grow an inch taller, and inch shorter, hair that does the same, the eyepatch that covers more and less of his face. He is trying to commit Travis to memory. “Don't worry Blake, you'll see me again.” Travis looks like he used to, but speaks like he does now. “Didn't I tell you? As long as you're alive, I will be right behind you.”

* * *

He was a fool. He was arrogant too, to believe Travis' drive for vengeance began and ended with him. He couldn't have imagined just how mad the man was. A failure on his part, admittedly.

On some level, he understands how Travis could have been driven to this. The rage there must be in him, and how unreal it all must seem, that he could destroy the entire human race out of spite.

But Blake is not like him. That's how he finds himself fighting to protect the place he came all this way to destroy, because he is not mad enough to believe his vengeance matters more than the billions of lives at stake, that the human race would be better off dead than under the control of the Federation.

Not yet, anyway.

But fighting the Andromedans means fighting Travis, and so Blake does that. He shoots him. He does the one thing he never could bring himself to, because everything, _everything_ , is at stake.

He finds himself slumped against the wall, injured, struggling to protect the place he meant to destroy. He thinks of Gan. Gan looked like this when he was dying. There's something fitting about that.

But Avon, Avon comes to find him, of course Avon came to find him. Blake can't help but ask: “is Travis dead?”

A turn, a shot, and a scream. Then it is all over.

“He is now.”

Avon. If Blake should love anyone, he should love Avon, because he knows Avon loves him. Avon loves him hopelessly, selflessly, self-destructively. And he hates it. He hates that he loves Blake. He hates how that affects him, corrupts him, changes him; how it makes him someone new entirely.

If Blake could love anyone, he would love Avon. But he can't. He can't love anyone except–

He's dragged to his feet, taken back to the Liberator. He's injured, but he should be alright. Except he doesn't feel like he's going to be alright. He feels like he's dying.

Then again, maybe he died a long time ago.


End file.
